Hotspot: Woodlawn.

Building For The Future

Woodlawn Is Giving Its Middle Class New Reasons Not To Leave Home

April 15, 1995|By Cal McAllister. Special to the Tribune.

A stroll through Woodlawn is a walk through a neighborhood that prosperity ignored. Shattered liquor bottles and rotting spare tires litter vacant lots where grass used to grow. Headless dolls and wheel-less bicycles, long since abandoned and forgotten, are silent symbols of the community itself. The joyful squeals of children have been replaced by occasional screams of fear and the unmistakable report of gunfire.

But now there are new sounds in Woodlawn-sounds, some say, that haven't been heard for 40 years. Hammers hitting nails. The churning of cement trucks. The shriek of circular saws cutting through new wood. The sounds of construction.

There are stores in Woodlawn now, and a bank. There are clean rehabbed apartments.

And there's Plaisance Place, a six-acre site bounded by 61st and 63rd Streets and Dorchester and Cottage Grove Avenues-the first "market rate" housing built in Woodlawn in the 40 years.

These are not insignificant additions. Woodlawn long has been the ugly duckling of the South Side. Nestled between Jackson Park to the west and the University of Chicago immediately north, the area is largely blighted and deserted. So much so, its own alderman has likened it to war-torn Beirut. Scattered, burned-out homes used by gangbangers and drug traffickers dominate the desolate landscape.

"The 1980 census showed this area to be stable," said developer Victor Knight, executive director of the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation (WPIC). "What it really said was that there was no one left to leave. Woodlawn, frankly, had bottomed out.

"Twenty- and 30-year home owners were sick of living here and sold their property to move to Calumet City or the suburbs," he said. "There were a lot of absentee owners who ran multi-family homes. They basically let their buildings get so run down they had to be condemned and shut down."

Knight, joined by Bishop Arthur M. Brazier, started WPIC in 1987 and began surveying the area for renovation. The group worked on the premise that people wouldn't leave the area if they had a reason to stay.

"A big part of the problem is if you don't have someplace better to move to, you move out," Brazier said.

Brazier, who has been the the bishop of the Apostolic Church of God, 6230 S. Dorchester Ave., for 35 years, spent several years with the community service project called The Woodlawn Organization before becoming involved with WPIC. Curious as to why his congregation slowly was dissolving, he asked members of the church why they were moving. Their reply: "Why stay?"

"Woodlawn had fallen from 60,000 residents in 1970 to 14,000 now," Brazier said. "It is a prime example of what happens when people of the working class, the people with the jobs, move out."

Instead of begging the city for money to support the remaining poor, WPIC asked Chicago to make an investment in Woodlawn. "The only way any community will survive or remain viable is if it is made up of mixed-income families," Brazier said. "We already know conglomerates of poor people isn't the answer. Look at Cabrini-Green. It's a compound of poverty."

In 1988, WPIC acquired Grove Parc Plaza, formerly Woodlawn Gardens, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The 504-unit, nine-building complex lines South Cottage Grove Avenue from East 61st to East 63rd Streets. It had sat in HUD's inventory for years. Eager to sell the dilapidated, partially vacant complex, HUD dealt it for $1.

WPIC, with the help of a $6 million loan from HUD and $1.6 million of its own funds, by April of 1990 turned the complex into a renovated Section 8 low-income apartment complex with a waiting list of 400 qualified families.

But possibly the most significant aspect of the huge deal was 31,000 square feet of commercial space. "Commercial development is the key anchor to any community," Knight said.

After some coaxing, Knight filled the space with PayLess Shoes, 830 E. 63rd St.; Farmer's Food Basket grocery store, 832 E. 63rd St.; and the most significant tenant, Cole Taylor Bank, 824 E. 63rd St. "Through a series of lower rent proposals we were able to attract Cole Taylor," Knight said. "We'll bend over backwards for them. They are the first new bank in Woodlawn in 20 years."

End phase one. WPIC went to 20th Ward Ald. Arenda Troutman with its next proposal in 1990.

"They came at the perfect time," said Troutman, who had been in office only a matter of weeks. "At the time, Habitat for Humanity was pitching an idea to take six buildings off my hands and build 100 CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) scattered-site, low-income rental units."

The offer was handed to her as a done deal, Troutman said. She only needed to sign papers left when her predecessor, Ald. Ernest Jones, died in office.

But something about that plan didn't seem right to Troutman. "We already have a lot of poor people in the ward," she said, "and now we are going to attract more? That's not how you build a community."